CANTO I

Halfway through a bad trip

I found myself in this stinking car park,

Underground, miles from Amarillo.

Students in thongs stood there,

Eating junk food from skips,

           flagmen spewing E’s,

Their breath of fetid

Myrrh and ratsbane,

        doners

And condemned chicken shin

        rose like

                       distemper.

Then I retched on rising ground;

Rabbits without ears, faces eaten away

                        by myxomatosis

Crawled towards a bleak lake

              to drink

                           of leucotomy.

The stink would revive a

         sparrow, spreadeagled on

           a lectern.

It so horrified my heart

         I shat

                  botox.

Here, by the toxic water,

    lay a spotted trout, its glow

    lighting paths for the VC.

And nigh the bins a giant rat,

Seediness oozing from her Flemish pores,

Pushed me backwards, bit by bit

Into Square 5,

              where the wind gnaws

                 and sunshine is spent.

By the cashpoint

      a bum asked for a light,

       hoarse from long silence, beaming.

When I saw him gyrate,

His teeth all wasted,

                               natch,

His eyes

        long dead

      through speed and booze,

I cried out

                ‘Take pity,

Whatever you are, man or ghost!’

‘Not man, though formerly a man,’

        he says, ‘I hail from Providence,

                  Rhode Island, a Korean vet.

Once I was a poet, I wrote

                  of bean spasms,

          was anthologised in Fuck You.’

‘You’re never Berrigan, that spring

Where all the river of style freezes?’

I ask, awe all over my facials.

‘I’m an American

        Primitive,’ he says,

‘I make up each verse as it comes,

By putting things

                     where they

           have to go.’

‘O glory of every poet, have a light,

May my Zippo benefit me now,

And all my stripping of your Sonnets.

You see this hairy she-rat

                  that stalks me like a pimp:

Get her       off my back,

                   for every vein and pulse

Throughout my frame she hath

                                     made quake.’

‘You must needs another way pursue,’

He says, winking while I shade my pin,

‘If you wouldst ’scape this beast.

Come, she lets none past her,

Save the VC; if she breathes on you,

                           you’re teaching nights.

This way, freshman, come,

If I’m not far wrong we can find

A bar, and talk it over with Ed and Tom.’

I went where he led, across a square

And down some steps,

                          following the crowd.

The SU bar, where we queued

For 30 minutes

To get a watery beer, was packed;

                              Ed and Tom

Sat at a banquette in the corner

Chain-smoking and swapping jokes.

Here we joined them,

                                 till closing time,

                             the beer doing the talking.

‘Look,’ said Tom, ‘if this guy’s got funding

And approval from the Dean and whatever,

Why not take him round?’

‘Show him the works,’ said Ed, ‘no holds barred!’

‘You mean,’ said Berrigan, ‘give him

                                                  a campus tour,

Like, give him Hell?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ said Ed.

‘Let’s drink to it!’ said Tom,

At which we all raised our glasses,

Unsteadily, clinking them together above

The full ashtray.

‘Hell,’ pronounced Berrigan gnomically,

‘Is other people. Sartre said that.

Hell is Hell. I said that.’

Now people were leaving,

                               we shifted outside,

Into the cold air,

Where we lingered a moment sharing a last

Cigarette, then split,

                  Ed and Tom going to their digs

Leaving me and Ted to breathe the night air.